Growing Up

Our girl is getting big. And while the doctor says that she could put on a little more weight, I think she weighs a ton already.

When she gets up in the morning, we often find her standing up in her crib. When we had the mosquito net on her crib, because of the fact that we don't have a proper frame for it, she ends up with her little head pushing up against the netting. I think she looks pretty funny.

Her crawling has improved and the other day, Stephen watched her back while she climbed up the two stairs between the living and dining rooms. Oh, boy, nothing is safe now.

Lexi is mostly sleeping through the night though she does still make her noises. If I don't hear them, then that means more sleep for me. Otherwise, I listen and wonder if I should go and try to make her quiet down. She doesn't seem to need anything really but a little comfort.

Show us the teeth!

More updates on Lexi’s development:

With Lexi moving so quickly in so many other ways in her development, a big question is when her first tooth will come in. It’s the biggest question on our minds, and everybody else is asking us too. Observations of her gums reveal no signs of a tooth. She’s not drooling or chewing her fingers any more than usual. I asked the pediatrician about it yesterday. He said not to worry if she has no teeth by this stage. So we will continue to wait.

We are also eager to have Lexi start sleeping through the night. The pattern for the past several months has been for her to wake up once at some point in the middle of the night (usually around 2:00 or 3:00 a.m.) to drink a bottle of milk. In the past couple of weeks, however, there have been hopeful signs that she is ready to give up this nighttime feeding. She has slept through the night on three nights in this period. I asked the doctor about this as well yesterday, and, based on how I described Lexi's behavior, he seemed to be saying that her waking up was largely psychological, that it is just how she has been conditioned, that her internal clock has been set to do this, not necessarily because she's hungry and can't sleep without being fed at that hour. So he suggested we try weaning her off this nighttime bottle, which we will try.

Breezing past 9 months and not looking back

I have just returned from Lexi’s 9-month check-up at the pediatrician. As usual, she passed with flying colors. Here are her latest stats:

Height: 73 cm (28.74 in)
Weight: 8.3 kg (18.3 lb)

The doctor said she’s a bit under average for her weight. Sarah and I had made our usual list of questions for the doctor, and one of them was about when we could start her on cow’s milk. He said that the formula that we are buying here to feed her is derived from cow’s milk, so she could easily make the transition now, but because she’s below weight, he recommended keeping her on formula, which has protein added and which will help her add some weight.

I wanted to explain that probably one reason she’s below weight is because she’s getting too much exercise. She’s now joining me at the gym daily. Just kidding. But she is as physically as active as ever. Since about the beginning of this month, she has quickly gained good coordination of her limbs to be crawling in a normal way. In the first few days of crawling so that she was actually moving, it was sometimes upsetting to her. She would stop every few minutes and just cry. It seemed to be so much work for her little body. I was worried that she just hadn’t figured out yet why she needed to crawl, that she was still just doing it because instinct told her so. But now, while she still hasn’t totally figured out the benefits of crawling – so she can move around well and go get things to go to people – she’s not distressed by it so much now. It’s just so cute to see her little hips move back and forth and for this little body to be moving around below foot.

And we were also worried for a few weeks there that she would bypass crawling for walking. As reported earlier on this blog, she was beginning to get on her feet by pulling herself up to a standing position in her crib. She is having a lot of fun being held up and walking with an adult’s assistance.

She also has a lot of fun just crawling and climbing on people, like if someone lies down next to her on the bed or if she’s lying next to someone on the couch. She really enjoys cuddling next to someone or the challenge of climbing up onto them so she’s in a standing position.

In all of this, late last week she turned 9 months old. On that day I asked her what she preferred – living on the inside or outside of Mommy, since she had spent an equal amount of time in both places. She seemed to say that she preferred it on the outside or has chosen to stay out here because she seems to like exploring the house and moving around and eating waffles for breakfast, which she couldn’t do before she was born. Fortunately, my parents, who are called Baba and Lolo, are visiting us in Nairobi for several weeks, so we were able to have a little birthday celebration complete with a candle and a pineapple upside-down cake that I had made.

It seems that all of Lexi’s development and getting older is taking place at lightning speed, but we’re so proud of her for all the ways she is growing up.

'Mmmbwa!'

Last weekend, the first weekend that my parents and a friend were here on a visit, we went up to Lake Naivasha, about a 1 1/2 hour drive north of Nairobi. While there, Lexi discovered her latest favorite word: mmmbwa. Well, I would spell it mbois. I think it's a combination of the little bit of French she's learned from us (occasionally she gets a lesson from a French/English picture book in place of a bedtime story) and the Kiswahili she has learned from Jane. The "m-b" sound at the beginning is a typical Kiswahili sound, and the "wah" sound (oi in French) at the end is a typical French sound. She said this word a lot and repeated it whenever I said it back to her.

We decided that yesterday, the first day of May, Lexi was officially crawling. It's not graceful movements or anything totally coordinated, but it's happening slowly. She must have decided at the beginning of the month to start something new. We're so proud of her!

To Walk or To Crawl?

Lexi is still working on trying to figure out how to crawl - she is SO close. It is pretty amazing how we learn to coordinate our muslces to do such things - and then they become second nature. She happily 'walks' if you hold her hands and walk with her. It's hard on the adult's back, though! She is pulling herself up on just about everything and laying on the bed today with me, she was trying to squirm over me to get to the other side. What for, I don't know.

Stephen's parents are here visiting and are having a good time with Lexi. While they are here, we will leave Lexi with them for 3 nights and take off for Mombassa. It will be interesting to see how she handles that. She is getting a little more 'mommy' clingy but Jane (the house help) manages to distract her easily enough so she doesn't wail too long. And she is happy to be held by just about anyone. We are currently in Tanzania and the hotel staff have all wanted to hold her.

Onward or upward?

Lexi is continuing to become better at moving herself around. A few days ago, she showed us that she can now pull herself up to a full standing position in the crib we have downstairs. She is quite proud of herself for being able to do this! This morning she did the same thing by pulling herself up on me while we sat on the couch.

The question now is if she feels she needs to go straight to walking and bypass crawling. But for crawling, she’s so close to being able to do it. She just can’t seem to dig in her knees enough to push her forward, and we think she realizes what needs to happen and how she needs to get all her limbs coordinated because she gets frustrated whenever she tries to crawl. We encourage her to keep practicing, however.

There is no sign of any teeth yet, although she can now eat things like pancakes and waffles when Mommy and Daddy eat them. She pretty much has the hang of picking up morsels and putting them in her mouth and chewing them, but this took some learning.

I "eight" well yesterday!

Lexi turned 8 months old yesterday.

She is just so curious about everything, and we’re doing our best to feed her appetite of curiosity about the world – including her literal appetite for food. She’s on quite the varied diet now, having at least tried all sorts of fruits and veggies – paw paw, mangos, garbanzo beans, bananas (her favorite), sweet potatoes, butternut squash, and carrots. And now we’ve introduced her to yogurt and cottage cheese. She doesn’t have any teeth yet, but we’re trying to teach her to chew her food, so we’re giving her tiny chunks of banana, sometimes for her to pick up with her fingers herself, rather than mashing it up and feeding it to her with a spoon. We’re also giving her Cheerios as a sort of dessert after dinner. She enjoys the challenge more of picking them up with her fingers, and we figure that everything she picks up gets put in her mouth anyway, so giving her food to do this with would serve another purpose. Well, she doesn’t quite get the concept of putting food in her mouth and keeping it there yet.

What gets me laughing out loud about her behavior these days is the faces she sometimes makes when trying a new food that has a strong or distinct taste. (Just think about trying some foods for the very first time – nobody could tell you that this or that tastes fruity or like chicken if you don’t have those tasting/eating experiences to draw on.) Only a young baby doesn’t have the inhibitions that would prevent her from showing how strange (or awful) something tastes.